BIO: John Stough BOBBS, M.D., Greenvillage, Franklin County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Denise Phillips

Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/franklin/
_______________________________________________ 

Medical Men of Franklin County, 1750-1925 by Ambrose Watts Thrush, M.D.;
Chambersburg, Pa.; Medical Society of Franklin County, Page 264-265
_______________________________________________

JOHN STOUGH BOBBS, M. D.
1809-1870

  John Stough Bobbs, surgeon, teacher and philanthropist, was born in 
Greenvillage, Franklin County, Pa., on December 28, 1809, and died in 1870 in 
Indianapolis, Ind., where he had lived for thirty-five years.

  On July 15, 1867, in a third story room, over a drug store in the city of 
Indianapolis, during an operation upon Mary E. Wiggins for the relief of an 
abdominal tumor of unknown pathology, Dr. Bobbs opened the gall bladder and 
evacuated the contents, at least in part.  The patient recovered and lived for 
many years.  Dr. Bobbs published an account of this operation and is accredited 
as being the first to open and drain the gall bladder in a living subject.

  Franklin County has the honor of being the place of his nativity.  His parents 
were poor and his early education meager.  At the age of eighteen he walked to 
Harrisburg in search of employment.  He became a private student with Dr. Martin 
Luther of that place, and in less than three years he was declared qualified to 
practice.  He located in Middletown, Pa., but after several years in 1835 he 
removed to Indianapolis, Ind., where he resided until his death.  In 1836 he 
attended a course of lectures at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa., 
and the following spring was granted the degree M. D. by this school.

  He was an ardent student and acquired a liberal education particularly in 
science and philosophy.  In 1850 he was appointed to fill the Chair of Surgery 
in the Medical Department of Asbury University, Greencastle, Ind., founded 1839, 
and now DePauw University.  Later he became dean of the faculty.

  He was a leader in the organization of the Marion County Medical Society in 
1847 and of the Indiana State Medical Society in 1849.  During the Civil War, 
Dr. Bobbs served as Brigade Surgeon.  He bequeathed two thousand dollars for the 
establishment of a free dispensary and five thousand dollars for a library.  
John Stough Bobbs., M. D., was the first in the world to demonstrate that the 
gall bladder could be opened and gall stones removed in the living subject.